Let’s jump into the “way back machine” and take a trip to the 70s. Bill Starkey was a teenage guy that many of us can relate to. He and his buddy Jay Evans loved rock and roll. There was an up and coming band that they really loved and people in their high school made fun of them because the band wasn’t popular. I’ve experienced that and I am sure that a lot of you have. The band wasn’t getting played on the radio in their hometown of Terre Haute, Indiana so they decided to call the station and request them. Even the disc jockey made fun of them because even they didn’t like the band. They told Bill and Jay that the band was a second rate version of Bachman Turner Overdrive. That just fueled the determination of the guys to harass the station even more to play their favorite band. They even wrote letters telling the station that if they didn’t play them that they would blow up the station. I know, it sounds crazy, right? Imagine someone doing that today! The FBI would be at the station in a heartbeat! Well, this was the 70s and a much different time. Anyway, back to our story. Well, the station finally gave in and played the band partially because of the persistent bugging from the guys plus the fact that the band was starting to get very popular. Some of you may be wondering who the hell the band was. Well, it was KISS and this is the story of its creation and its co-founder, Commander in Chief Bill Starkey.
Gene’s version of the start of the KISS Army there in Terre Haute, Indiana is a bigger is better version. When did you let the cat out of the bag?
Bill Starkey: The cat was never really let out of the bag because the original version of the story was always told. I think the first time I was ever told that it was changed to Gene’s version was when KISSTORY came out and I picked it up. I was thinking what is this all about? I was happy that I was even mentioned in there. Until this day, I’ve been on the stage twice with them since then they don’t stray away from that story. I don’t understand why because there were too many other people alive at the time that I have to be honest with. I talked to Rich Dickerson the DJ a few years before he retired from radio and I asked him did you hear what they were saying about the KISS Army. I told him that they were saying that we surrounded the radio station and we wouldn’t let you come out of the station until you played KISS. He laughed and ‘hey I like that; let’s stay with it’ and I told him ‘but Rich, that didn’t happen.’ Some people may prefer the KISS version but I owe it to the original members to give them their due. There’s one writer who said ‘the KISS Army was like Chinese water torture; it happened very slowly and over a matter of months not just this quick thing.’ We’ve never sat down between us and compared stories.
I have this theory and this is why I always say it covers everybody’s angles. When KISS came to Terre Haute to play disc jockey and play their show, Rich Dickerson had a great idea. We would have this big parade and they would drive through downtown escorted by the US Army. They would come to the station and they would let them play disc jockeys. They let the fans know that they were going to be there and the fans DID surround the radio station but the music was already being played. I have people tell me all the time that Netflix is always looking for content. Why not the KISS Army story? I’ve had people tell me that even if you’re not a KISS fan that the stories that I’ve told on podcasts are entertaining. The funny thing about it is they’re all true. I don’t consider myself some genius because I we got lucky. Jay and I never intended to meet KISS. We were just a couple of guys not doing anything, we were between school and jobs and careers and we started this out of our basement. We thought it was terrible that KISS were not getting the same fair airplay as everyone else around there was. All this time, I give much credit to Rich Dickerson because if it wasn’t for him they’re probably wouldn’t have been a KISS Army because it was his idea to continue this campaign. He swears all the time he was just humoring us. He says he knew all along they were going to be big and this was just part of his game plan. If he was playing around with us he was very convincing. I have people who worked for him tell me that he had the KISS albums and pitched them.
You can imagine how I felt when they eventually called me back and asked if I could bring my albums over? They needed to make copies of them because KISS Alive! was really breaking out. I had no job, no future, no car, and I’m asking my mom if I could borrow her car? She asked why and I told her I had to go over to WVTS and take my KISS albums over there so they could make copies for airplay. She would just shake her head and say ‘you and this KISS stuff.’ Both she and my dad never thought anything would come of it. You can imagine how shocked my mom was when she was in the stands on November 21st 1975 when they brought me up on stage to give me a plaque.
She was there, but didn’t know that was going to happen?
She knew that I had made a connection with the band but she did not know that was going to happen. Later on I was told she cried when KISS flew me to NYC for their New Years concert. She thought I’d never return. It all worked out for the best. I was 19 and I needed to learn a lot about life before I could do something like run a fan club for a popular rock group.
Was that the only local radio station that you had?
No, and that’s a good question. WVTS was the major ratings chief at the time, but there was another station called WPFR-FM and they were way out far west of us. They were a little bit looser on their playlist. It wouldn’t be uncommon for them to play one entire side of (Pink Floyd’s) Dark Side of the Moon and the DJ would go out back to smoke or something. They would have a transistor radio on the deck out back. I asked him why they did that and they said it was so they would know when/if the record ever skipped. Think about it, this was 1975 rock and roll radio. Eventually WPFR’s Ed Ganzman said he liked this KISS stuff and this was probably in August of 75. To this day, Ed proudly reminds me HIS station played KISS first. WVTS accepted a KISS plaque for the Hulman Center which caused some confusion from the PFR camp who thought WVTS was getting something. Here I was in the middle.
Are the stations still there today?
I have people come to Terre Haute all the time and they’ll contact me and ask where it’s at. It’s kind of hard to explain sometimes because both radio stations were not even in the city limits. They were in West Terre Haute, across the bridge. People will go downtown and find a radio station and ask if that’s the one that we surrounded. First off, we didn’t surround the station and secondly that radio station doesn’t exist anymore. WVTS was a converted ranch house and in the basement was the studio. A while back I took one of the local TV channels there because they were doing a big KISS 35th anniversary special. We went out to the home of the people who now live at the ranch house. The man who lives there was an Aerosmith fan and he remembers as a kid when KISS came out there to the station. We were going through all my old pictures that you might have seen online. I’ll be with the one with that hat on and that is in the station of WVTS. She said that the basement hadn’t changed much at all. I asked her if she realized that KISS was in your basement and we got a big laugh out of it. The tower just recently got taken down and it was up for many, many decades. Now there is WVVR which has kind of taken over the classic rock thing for the Terre Haute area.
I read that your dad worked for Columbia Records?
We had both Columbia Records and Columbia House, which were the main industries in Terre Haute for a long time. A lot of people don’t realize that 80% of the vinyl that was being made in the 70s came out of Terre Haute. CBS owned us and CBS was out of New York and they believed because of shipping to the coast that Terre Haute was the perfect, prime place because it was right smack dab in the middle of the country. They had a warehouse on the West coast and then of course they had a New Jersey one but all the major manufacturing came out of Terre Haute. My Dad worked for them as an expediter which is a fancy name for a guy that ships out records. Basically he was just a factory worker and it was his job to make sure as many copies of certain albums were pressed. He would bring home freebies for us kids, albums by Warner Brothers artists like Alice Cooper and Deep Purple who were two bands that I loved. Casablanca Records had just started out and they weren’t big enough to do their own shipping so they asked Warner Brothers to do it. I saw KISS on Midnight Special and I asked dad if he had an album by them and at that time he brought us the first album that came out. It had the poster that came with it and I wore out taking to school and everywhere. Like a kid with a security blanket, I wish I would have taken better care of it.
Then, Hotter than Hell came out and my Dad asked if I wanted to go to a rock concert and one of the stipulations was I could go but he had to be there and he was going to take my little brother too. He asked who I wanted to go see and I told him I wasn’t sure who I wanted to see and he said Deep Purple was playing Market Square Arena. I thought that was great because at that time Made in Japan had just came out and it was killer. I thought that was who I was going to see Ritchie Blackmore and Deep Purple. Market Square had just been constructed at that time and it’s now since demolished about five or six years ago. He tried to get tickets but they were sold out and that was disappointing.
So, he asked if I wanted to go see that KISS band that I liked. We had to go Evansville and it was on a Sunday night. We went there and it was a lousy drive. It was about two hours away and it was on December the 8th. You can imagine the snow on the ground and this was a beat-up pickup truck. So, we go to Evansville Roberts Stadium which was built for high school basketball. It’s circular and there are wooden bleachers that cause a lot of noise when you’re stomping on them. Dad went to the will-call window and he asked if there were tickets for Starkey from Casablanca Records. The lady told us no and he didn’t know what to do so he had a crazy idea to get in this car and drive around Evansville and look for a KISS album so he could find the phone number on the back and call somebody from Casablanca. He found out quickly that there were no KISS albums in Evansville, so he went back to the will-call window and asked her if she was sure she didn’t have any tickets. He told her that he drove all the way from Terre Haute with his two sons and she had a soft spot in her heart. She ended up letting us in so we get in there and they were three bands and one of them was just finishing their set and that’s what’s when I saw KISS.
What did your Dad think of them?
He liked them; he didn’t like the music but he liked the way they looked. He liked their energy and he liked their rapport that they had with the fans. They had this real get up off your ass and clap your hands thing with the fans and that’s what he noticed. For him it was almost like a high school basketball kind of thing- like a pep rally. They got people up on their feet and stomping. We watched all this and I think they were only allowed to do one encore at the time. Then the lights came on and the smoke was so thick from the marijuana in the place you could barely see the stage. The headliner was ZZ Top and they came out and played two or three songs you can imagine following KISS. Nothing against Billy Gibbons and the guys because they’re great musicians. They get up there and they just plod around and my Dad looked at us after about two or three songs and asked if we had seen enough? We said yeah and we left and drove all the way back home.
So I can’t wait for Monday morning, I’m a junior in school, and I get on the bus. Jay rides the bus with me and it’s dark this time of year in the morning. I told him that I saw KISS and they were incredible. He asked where and I told him Evansville. I told him it was the best concert I ever saw. Three weeks later we get the Indianapolis paper and my Dad sees that KISS was playing in Indianapolis. They were playing something called Christmas Jam headlined by REO Speedwagon. There was another band called Hydra and another called Quicksilver Messenger. Rush was supposed to be there but Rush did not show. The show began at 5:00 in the afternoon on this Saturday. My Dad looked at my mom said that she needed to see these guys. He kind of dared her to take us and she fell for it.
She wanted to see what he was talking about so my mom takes us to see our second KISS show and God help her, she sat through hours and hours of bands and it really didn’t get exciting for her until REO Speedwagon came out. The only thing they really had out at that time was “Riding the Storm Out” but that was really big for Indiana. Before they left the stage they said ‘stay tuned for KISS’ and the lights came on and people were leaving. Mom said ‘let’s go’ and I told her that we came there for KISS and it was getting close to midnight. Mom said we had to go soon and I begged her to stay just a little longer. When they came out on stage, she was blown away. They were an opener so that didn’t get all of the colorful lights, they only got the white lights but that worked in their favor because it made them look even more bizarre. The bright white lights with their black and white and silver only made them look better. Mom ruled and we were only able to see some of the songs into our second KISS show because she said we had to go.
I was still content with what I had seen, so the next day I told Jay that I had seen KISS twice now and they are unbelievable. That’s when Jay said let’s start calling the request line and see if they will play KISS. So we started doing stuff out of our basement because that’s where we would meet. We would cut out what pictures we could find of KISS from Circus or Creem magazines. We’d look for KISS concert pyro pictures, paste them on a sheet of paper saying we would burn up/blow up the radio station or else. It was getting pretty hokey but we just did it as a laugh. We didn’t think anyone would be offended by it but at the same time WVTS would do stuff to get back at us. They would tell us that they would play KISS but they would wait until after 11:00 to do it and they would play “Love Theme From KISS.” Leading up to a news break, they would play something like “Strutter” but not mention the band’s name. We would call and ask what they were doing and they would laugh and say ‘well, we played KISS’ and they were right. So, it was this game that went back and forth for a long time. This was probably January of ’75 and who would have thought 11 months later in November of ’75 that KISS Alive! would be selling out everywhere. That’s how fast they rose to prominence.
You guys were definitely persistent with that station!
Yes, we were good friends with him and we could talk music with them. In those days, they were radio personalities. They had great voices and they had their own time slot. The main man was Rich Dickerson and his time slot was something like 3:00 to 6:00 so he had the 5:00 rush hour. They knew when KISS was coming and announced in September that they were coming in November. Rich contacted me and said that he remembered the stupid letters that we wrote. He said that he had an idea. He wanted us to write five or six of them at a time and he would read them on the 5:00 rush hour. He called it the KISS Army Letter of the Day. I have people that I’m running into 20, 30 years later who would tell me they remembered those letters being read on the air while they were driving home from work. Nobody has any tapes of that and I don’t have any copies of the letters. Rich would still laugh and say our grammar was bad and it probably was but we would also say stupid things that we didn’t believe but it was part of the game. You know, like we would say KISS was better than the Beatles or KISS was better than Led Zeppelin and that was just our game. We thought nobody could top KISS. I would take my KISS poster from the first album and put it in my locker at school. Every now and then I’d pull it out like it was a centerfold and the kids would be ‘oh my God; who is that?’ We had no intention of meeting the band. We just wanted to get them on the radio.
I have all sorts of funny stories like when I first met Junior Smalling, their road manager. He told me where to go after the concert and he wanted me to round up a bunch of girls and I thought I can’t even get a date for the prom and you want me to round up girls! He told he didn’t care if I have to go up and down the city street, but to get as many girls as I could. So I’m in charge of the harem, but my concern was getting Jay there plus my brother and his friends. We would paint them up and call them the Unknown Soldiers of the KISS Army. We would take them to the mall, which we only had one, and Jay and I would walk ten paces behind them and watch the reactions. My cousin did a convincing Gene Simmons; nobody knows who the hell you are anyway when you’re in makeup. We would also go to the McDonald’s drive-thru; this is how you did cheap laughs in the midwest. Jay had a Radio Shack cassette recorder and he was making bootleg KISS stuff for people and passing them out.
Then KISS came to Terre Haute on November 21st and we were told the week before the concert that it was a sellout. It was one of those nights where we had the guys painted up and we decided to go by the station and torment the disc jockey that was playing. I remember he said that the KISS Army had descended on the station like a horde of painted devils. One night we tried it and Rich Dickerson’s wife met us at the door and told us the concert had sold out and KISS wanted to meet us. Aucoin Management’s people were so sharp that they called the radio station and asked how the KISS show sold out when Aerosmith and the Doobie Brothers and other acts did not except for Elvis Presley? The radio station said there were these two stupid kids that had been writing letters to the radio station and they called themselves the KISS Army and that was it. They said, ‘we need to talk to this guy.’ I found out decades later KISS always planned on doing a fan club as early as September of 75 and they contacted Ron Boutwell. The only stumbling block was they didn’t have a name picked out and we gave them that name. I was the President but Aucoin Management made me change it to Commander in Chief. Jay went by the title Field Marshall, don’t ask me why? KISS flew me to New York in January and I got to hang out with Jim Neff who was the guy behind the Cadillac Michigan thing and we got to see KISS play New Year’s Eve. We got to spend three days in New York which was nice and I was invited to a pool party with KISS, which was crazy.
How old were you when this happened?
19 and my very first national interview was with Rolling Stone of all things.
Do you have that anywhere?
They used small parts of my interview and it was syndicated to newspapers. My cousins found it in the Indianapolis paper. It was an article about KISS and it talked about little things that happened to promote the band. I didn’t hear anything else from anybody until March and I got this package and it was t-shirts and membership packets. There was a letter from Boutwell Enterprises stating that they were going to run the KISS Army and they were just going to use me basically as a product evaluator or whatever. Back in those days they didn’t have any merch. They had a poster, a T-shirt and a belt buckle at the time and this was in the spring of 76. Boutwell’s people handled other fan clubs like Elton John’s and some admitted they didn’t get into KISS. They were out in LA and it was a totally different vibe than in the mid-west. They were different and I remember the one girl that I used to talk to a lot didn’t really get into the band until she saw them at Magic Mountain when they performed for the Phantom of the Park film.I got disenchanted with the arrangement compared to what I was promised initially. It was also getting harder and harder for me to get tickets to shows and eventually we had a falling out. That’s the way it goes; that’s the music business.
Did you totally lose interest in the band?
I always followed what they were doing. I didn’t know how I felt about the solo albums, but I kind of felt like it was the first step of the band disbanding. I was really disappointed when they took off the makeup and when they lost Peter and Ace. They still came back to Terre Haute and played but they never quite had the crowds that they had with the originals.
Do you still have that plaque from the 1975 show?
I do have it.
I have and I still get teased about it because one of my friends that sells KISS stuff says everybody has a price and we just laugh. He may have a point. I think the KISS Army should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a permanent exhibit for KISS fans. If that were the case, then I might put some KISS memorabilia in there if I knew it would be permanent. I’m biased but I think the KISS Army is the best fan club anywhere. It was mentioned on the Colbert’s Show, the Simpsons and Jeopardy.
The Simpsons had Metallica and Aerosmith on there and others, but never KISS. I wonder why?
I’m not sure..maybe there were some creative differences between the band the writers?
Just recently, I heard the KISS Army mentioned on an older episode of the The Big Bang Theory.
Earlier you mentioned some of the collectible stuff that has meaning to you. Like what?
I have some guitar picks from ’76 and bootleg T shirts with some of the original t-shirts.
What about the t-shirts that you guys made that you can see in the pic of you guys in the bathroom?
Oh no, oddly enough one of our guys still has his and his wife framed it for him. He also has a ticket from that first show in Terre Haute and his was not torn which is cool. He was one of the kids that got painted up and later on went on to become a cop. WVTS radio station had a hearse that they used for promotional things and they showed up at the airport with KISS. They wanted these kids to paint up like they always do to torment the radio stations and they had them riding in the hearse to use as a decoy. They wanted fans to think that was really KISS. Peter and Gene got in one limo and they put Ace of Paul in another. A friend of mine was interviewing Peter at the time and they ended up having a flat tire. You can hear the ‘thump, thump, thump’ in the interview and Gene says ‘I think we hit something’ and that’s when they made the interview stop. I can’t remember if they had to get another car or what but my Unknown Soldiers were being transported to WVTS where we were all going to meet. That’s when one of the guys lost his ticket and JR Smalling gave him a new one which would not get torn.
I hated back in the day when they would rip the tickets like that and sometimes they would totally rip the name of the band off.
I still keep all of my tickets because people ask me how many shows I’ve been to but not as many as you would think. Maybe in the twenties; I don’t know but I don’t have the stubs for all of them. I don’t have the one for the New Year’s show when I was with the band because we rode in on limousines and they didn’t give you tickets back. I was riding in limousine with Billy Squier because at that time he was in a band called Piper and they were entertaining him. Aucoin wanted to sign his band Piper.
Wow, that’s a great story.
The Netflix thing would be great and so would a book.
I’ve talked to a lot of guys that have done books like Ken Sharp and Dale Sherman. I just get the impression that books are not worth the effort. Lots of work writing it and plenty of work promoting the sale of it. You know Cadillac did a monument and it would great if Terre Haute made one..or even two.
Do you talk to the guys today?
No. There’s no reason. Tommy Thayer found my number once and called me at home. He wanted some pictures for a KISS tour book. Eventually he sent me free tickets for a while. It was great.
Going back to the books, did you read any of them that each of the guys put out?
Yeah, I’m in Paul’s. The only thing he put in there was that he put my KISS Army letter that I got from Aucoin Management stating that the KISS Army was in Terre Haute and they were looking forward to starting the KISS Army in Terre Haute. He didn’t comment about it but he put it in his book. Peter did give me credit in his book. He said that he wanted to thank Bill Starkey and Jay Evans for creating the KISS Army. Peter’s book was hilarious! Have you read his book?
Oh yeah.
He came off kinda bitter and I feel bad for him in that aspect. I have heard lately that he’s more at peace with his life than he’s ever been and that’s fantastic.
I met Peter him at a Mad Monster event earlier this year and he really did seem that way. He was just incredibly kind and gracious with his words.
The band’s level of being pop icons is astounding to me. I’ve bet people that I could stand outside of a Walmart on a busy day with a picture of KISS and one of our Vice President. I bet that more than 75% of people would know who KISS was as opposed to the Vice President.
That doesn’t surprise me at all. There was a VH1 special called When KISS Ruled the World that I think I was in and it was true. They really did rule the world. Back then there were only about three or four channels on your television and the only way to see a concert was to go to it. A concert was something special. You can tell people what KISS or Alice Cooper was like but there weren’t any videotapes or DVDs so you had to see it in person so the event meant more to you then. I guess the crowd was crazier and the applause was louder because that was your special moment. Nowadays, you can tape something off your phone and go home and watch it. There’s no surprise element anymore so no, I’m not surprised. They came up with a thing that not a lot of people could come up with and I’ve always said that they don’t always get a lot of credit. To me it was all about the music; the KISS Army wasn’t started about the makeup or anything. It was started about the songs, we thought they were good enough to be on the radio and they weren’t given a fair shake. I think you have to admit that a lot of people picked up the guitar just because they saw KISS. They may not end up playing KISS music, but that’s what influenced them to do that. We’ve talked about their influence on pop culture.
December 2 is quickly approaching. Months ago, I thought that they would announce a Vegas residency after the first of the New Year. A good buddy of mine said that the tone of the band seems to have changed in the last six months and it really sounds like this is it. I have to agree with him on that. Do you think that will be it?
Yeah, I think it will. Gene may do some stuff with his band but it will be limited. They’ll keep doing things but I doubt KISS 2.0 would fly.
I can’t see it either. What size venues is Gene talking about all around the world?
That’s what they’ve been saying. A tribute band is a tribute band and Mr. Speed is the best tribute band that I know of. Why would you want to replace those guys?
I think the KISS machine will keep going but in different ways.
I don’t either and we talked about the social media thing and I have fans get on me asking how I can support Tommy and Eric the way I do. I respect and honor the originals but I also remember some shows where the originals were not up to task. First off, I don’t know if Peter can play anymore and I’m not sure if Ace can be sharp enough. I do feel like they did make a mistake at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing not performing.
Do you think they should have inducted more than just the original four into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
No, I’m fine with that. I know they use that excuse about the Grateful Dead and Springsteen’s band where they inducted a lot of their members. I don’t know how you would have done it. Yes, maybe Bruce and Eric Carr but Tommy and Eric have both been in the band longer than the originals (Ace and Peter) so I don’t know. I’m just happy that the four originals got in. Who knows? As a fan, I use the example of KISS Unplugged and that ended up being done brilliantly. They never knew that was going to come off as good as it did and look at how it happened, so it can be done.
My dream scenario would be Bruce come out and do “Tears Are Falling’ because we all know that nobody can nail that solo like he does. Have Peter come out and do “Beth” and Ace can come out and do maybe “Shock Me” with the smoking guitar solo and maybe “New York Groove.” I don’t care about the makeup issues; I just want to see them together one last time.
I think you just came up with the perfect scenario and I bet most fans feel the same way you do.
Bill, this has been an amazing conversation and I thank you so much. This is really been a treat and so much fun talking with you.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Shortly after our talk with Bill, KISS was forced to postpone three shows in a row due to Paul having a really tough battle with the flu. His first show back from it was the Indianapolis, Indiana show on 11/25. Bill attended that show and received a shout-out both during the soundcheck and during the concert from Paul Stanley for creating the KISS Army. Below are clips of each of those moments.